Commission for Relief in Belgium
- Abbreviated: CRB
History
In 1914, the American businessman Herbert Hoover was chosen as chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) and organised relief for the Belgian population. He set up an organisation for the purchase and transport of essential necessities, jointly supplied by the Belgian and American governments. [1] He collaborated with the Belgian banker Emile Francqui who, for his part, organised a "National Relief and Food Committee" on our territory, responsible for receiving food from America and distributing it to the population. This undertaking took on an unprecedented scale. The CRB, at that time, functioned independently, as a sort of welfare republic with its own flag, navy, factories, mills and railway network.
At the end of the First World War, the organisation still had considerable funds at its disposal. Hoover decided to use this money for the recovery of Belgium and invested in the country's universities. Francqui and Hoover, through their respective institutions, to wit: the CRB and the National Relief and Food Committee, created the University Foundation and the Commission for Relief in Belgium Educational Foundation Incorporation (CRBEF) in 1920. This New York-based philanthropic foundation was founded in 1920 and was renamed the Belgian-American Educational Foundation (BAEF) in 1938. Its board of directors was composed equally of representatives from the United States and Belgium. This philanthropic foundation still exists and had the task of promoting understanding between the two countries through subsidies granted to the Belgian scientific world (similar to those of the University Foundation), as well as through a system of student exchange grants. This programme still exists today.[2]
The first Belgians crossed the Atlantic on scholarships from the Commission for Relief in Belgium Educational Foundation in January 1920. The programme quickly gained momentum: on the eve of the Second World War, almost a quarter of the professors and researchers in the faculties of science, medicine and business schools in Belgium had done part of their studies in the United States. [3] In the opposite direction, the number of applicants was smaller, and was mainly made up of students of literature, history and art history. At the same time, the CRBEF generously funded research in Belgium. It granted subsidies to the University Foundation, the universities of Leuven and Brussels
[4]
, the Institute of Tropical Medicine and the Francqui Foundation. Finally, until 1924, the CRBEF also organised educational programmes for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Bibliography
- Halleux R., (dir.), Histoire des sciences en Belgique (1815-2000), t. I (1815-1927), Bruxelles, La Renaissance du Livre, 2001.
- Nash G. H., « Herbert Hoover’s Contribution to the Reconstruction of Belgium after World War I » in Tallier P.-A., Nefors P. (éd.), Quand les canons se taisent : actes du colloque international organisé par les Archives de l’État et le Musée royal de l’Armée et d’Histoire militaire (Bruxelles, 3-6 novembre 2008), Bruxelles, AGR, 2010, p. 363-401.
- Ranieri L., Émile Francqui ou l’intelligence créatrice, Paris, Duculot, 1985.
Notes
- ↑ Robert Halleux, Geert Vanpaemel, Jan Vandersmissen en Andrée Despy-Meyer (red.), Geschiedenis van de wetenschappen in België 1815-2000, Brussel: Dexia/La Renaissance du livre, 2001, vol. 1 p. 82.
- ↑ Hoover's Legacy consulted on 08/07/2010 at 13h10.
See also: https://baef.be/baef-history/ , consulted on 24/01/2023. - ↑ Ranieri L., Émile Francqui ou l’intelligence créatrice, Paris, Duculot, 1985, p. 311.
- ↑ In 1921, the CRBEF granted 100,000 BF to the ULB and the UCL. In 1922, it granted no less than 1,500,000 BF to the ULB for the construction of the Solbosch campus; and another 50,000 BF to the UCL in 1923 for the reconstruction of its library destroyed during the war. Finally, the CRBEF was the driving force behind the foundation, in 1926, of the Hoover Foundation for the Development of the Free University of Brussels and the Hoover Foundation for the Development of the Free University of Louvain.
